The Smiley Smile Message Board

I found a copy of Wild Honey on vinyl (been hard to locate all these years for some reason) and it says STEREO in big fat letters all over the place, but I swear to God the damm thing is in mono! I got on my hands and knees and crawled from speaker to speaker and it's the exact same audio image blaring from each speaker. No stereo seperation. WTF? It's certainly not Duophonic. I know a Duophonic nightmare when I hear one......

I should really know the answer to this. I am a musician after all..........


...... well, I'm a drummer.  :p

I have the Dutch double LP with WH and 'Friends'. The WH album is indeed in mono and the sleeve claims it is stereo. Since day one I found the sound horribly thin; it is incredible because at that time the state of the production art was really far enough for a decent true stereo producion, as any fool knows. It always puzzled me why the boys even thought of releasing it this way.
Really, the vinyl album sounds like it was recorded on a C60 cassette that had priorily been used some 100 times for other purposes. The top and low ends are totally absent. Lovely songs like 'Let The Wind Blow' and 'I'd Love Just Once To See You' suffer from it; in the title track the volume settings of the electric organ seem to vary randomly; and the potentially energetic 'Darlin'' is almost unbearable in that form.
'Friends', on the other hand, sounds beautiful, in glorious stereo.
Irony is: IMHO 'Wild Honey' has the most beautiful Beach Boys sleeve of them all.

The later CD versions are a bit more dynamic, but you can't turn a production that was disastrous from the word 'go' into an audio miracle anymore.

Get the green label Capitol reissue from 1982.  It's about as good as this album is gonna sound without a full remix.  The original stereo copies are bass/treble rechannelled and hard to listen to.  The Reprise twofer issue in the '70's used the same fake stereo master, IIRC.

Drummers are not musicians. They pound on the skin of animals. To produce rhythmic noise. Noise. That's what it is. They thus assist the musicians in playing together... >:D

Anybody have the Simply Vinyl 180 gram release?  How is the sound on it?

You're a braver man than I am, starting a thread with this subject. I am very afraid of the responses I'd get.

I have a copy of Wild Honey that's in true Duophonic -- that is, mono on both sides, but one channel is delayed by a fraction of a sentence -- basically, the same technique that uses artificial double-tracking on several songs on Revolver. Wild Honey surprisingly sounds really good this way, at least to my ears...gives it an extra boost...

No you're not stupid.  The cover and label always said STEREO but the records were always mono. Except for the duophonic ones labeled as such.
I hear tell they could do stereo mixes of Wild Honey and Smiley Smile (they have the multitracks) but there's not exactly a market for them.

Wow! I would die to hear a good mix of both of those albums!

A friend who's in the know once played me stereo mixes of both Country Air and Aren't you glad and I swear Country Air sounded supernaturally good.... Shivers went up my spine. With all the seperation you could hear the boys breathing in between parts and people giggling. It's obvious they all, or at least some, were stoned out of their minds when they tracked this. The sheer joy of singing that they got just shot through me like a rod. The "ah-ha"s at the end just killed me..... Now when I listen to the released version, it's like someone drove a steamroller over the whole thing. Still great but not........ IT!!!!!! Kinda how it was when I listened to Sgt Pepper on acid! (btw, AVOID Surf's UP or Smile on acid) I hear it now and it's amazing but will never match that one time.....

the problem with the SV release is that essentially its the cd version put to vinyl and its expensive.  there are some great versions which go for alot less.